It was the dumbest thing I did while serving as a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

I was stationed at Kerem Shalom, bordering Gaza. Waking up late one morning, I donned my IDF uniform, loaded my plate with breakfast from the soldiers’ mess, and ran toward the military vehicle that would take us to the desert where we were building a fence to stop terrorists from smuggling explosives and drugs into Israel.

The soldiers looked at me as if I was wearing a suicide bomber’s vest. The driver yelled at me in Hebrew. The major pointed his M-16 rifle at the breakfast plate in my hand.

The shekel had dropped: I had broken a kosher law, violated a sacred boundary, and fouled my plate by bringing it out of the dining hall.

In a rapid-fire discussion, several soldiers proposed remedies to heal the breach and restore the polluted dish to its original state of purity. As a biblical scholar, I kicked myself for forgetting the Levitical kosher laws. Why do Jews fuss over kosher? I asked myself.